Koji Project 1: Death to Smurfy

[mattdouken]

so when i plan to do my bodywork and paint, you would suggest evercoat for my filling?

[koji]

It's update time again. It's been a slow couple of days since my last update because I'm preparing the house for thanksgiving since we're hosting the whole fam damily this year.

Finally got the dash painted. I realized afterwards that I must have taken this in-between the 3rd and 4th coats because you can still see some blue in the vent. Anyway, it's black now, trust me.



Also got the amp mounted to something a bit more solid. I'm not keeping the spare tire in this car which allowed me to pull the spare, the OEM plastic surround, and the mounting bracket out then use that location to mount the amp.

I added a bracket to the OEM bolt hole here:



Made a support for the amp out of some leftover MDF:



Covered it with carpet and mounted up the amp.



I spent some time tonight dinking with the amp and something is wrong. The thing isn't seeing power. Despite all the crap I've done on cars, this is my first amp so I have no idea WTF the problem is. Oh well. I need to do a bunch more crap around the house so the diagnosis can wait till this weekend.

That's all for now. More to come!

[Medusa]

I've started reading through some of your threads on NASIOC...

[koji]

Originally Posted by mattdouken

so when i plan to do my bodywork and paint, you would suggest evercoat for my filling?

Zactly.

[koji]

Originally Posted by Medusa

I've started reading through some of your threads on NASIOC...

Hope you've got a week to kill.

If you want to actually see the pictures from the "32 Mods" thread go to my blog: UNplug

[Medusa]

Well I've spent probably the last two hours on just one thread (Operation Rally-Bred), but I'm almost done with it. I'm a fast reader.

This has actually inspired me to paint my wheel sometime in the near future - say, about 2 weeks. I'll definitely give you credit when I post a thread about it.

[Hubbard 0]

The biggest problem people usually have with AMPs are the ground or remote turn on. The ground needs to be really good, but I doubt that's your problem considering your past electronic experience.

You said you don't know much about the car stereo world, so did you hook up a remote turn on? Hard to tell in the picture, but I can't see one.

[lsgheero]

Originally Posted by koji

I always take lots of pictures.

Sure thing though. And if you need help or advice while you're going through your build out I'm happy to help. I do plenty of that kind of thing on the Subaru forums. I just recently started logging that stuff on my blog as well because I seem to get the same types of questions over and over and it's just easier to send people a link.

As far as the door skins on the MKII - they are also cardboard. Other than luxury makes that's actually pretty common for cars of this vintage. The gray you see is not in fact plastic but rather a thin layer of foam. You may or may not actually need more foam depending on how you want to construct your skin.

Some pre-advice about the materials.

You will likely want some good vinyl or leather, which isn't cheap. We're talking upwards of $25 per yard. This is why you should consider sectioning off certain parts and just making them smooth with fiberglass. You'll use less vinyl, and realistically you may not even be able to get nice vinyl that'll be big enough to cover your whole door in one go. It'll also allow you to add another texture to a door that's sort of "monochrome" if you will.

Regular hardware store fiberglass resin and cloth are fine for a novice or newbie. I've made plenty of quality parts with it. If you get into glassing you'll want something better because the work time on the Elmers/bondo/whatever brand resin sucks. US Composites is the shiznit if you want good stuff. Oh, and BTW, the good stuff is basically the same price as the cheap stuff - it's just you need to put in a pretty big order to make the shipping worth it and for a one-off project or newbie it's just not worth it.

Buy good body filler. I can't stress this enough. Bondo brand products should be outlawed. After I tried using Evercoat products I'll never go back. You can order it online from summit racing or casswell plating. It's good stuff to have on-hand.

Just wanted to mention that I am redoing my entire interior with new vynil I am using stuff from a place we have out here called Joanns (its a craft store) the stuff I am using much like koji said is $30 a yard. But its about 3-4 feet acrossed so its worth the money.

You can see pics of the mk1 center console here.

http://www.mr2.com/forums/interior-m...storation.html

[koji]

Originally Posted by Hubbard 0

The biggest problem people usually have with AMPs are the ground or remote turn on. The ground needs to be really good, but I doubt that's your problem considering your past electronic experience.

You said you don't know much about the car stereo world, so did you hook up a remote turn on? Hard to tell in the picture, but I can't see one.

I didn't hook up a remote turn on. I seriously don't even know what that is. Do I need it?

Pending your answer to the above I'll re-do all the connections starting with the ground. I hooked this thing up like every other connection I've ever done at the battery but stranger things have happened.

[mmarookiejoe]

You definately need a remote turn on. This is what ensures that your amp turns on and off as the stereo does. On the amp, there is (or at least should be) a terminal alongside the power and ground terminals that says REM or REMOTE. Run a 16 or 18 guage wire from there to the power antenna wire or the "Key power" wire coming from the back of your head unit. Without that wire connected to either of those or constant power (which you DO NOT want to do since it will leave your amp running 24/7, hence constant) the circuit will not be complete within the amp and it won't turn on. I've also seen people add a toggle switch to this wire so that they can turn the amp on and off manually, in case they don't always want their subwoofer on.

[Hubbard 0]

Originally Posted by koji

I didn't hook up a remote turn on. I seriously don't even know what that is. Do I need it?

Pending your answer to the above I'll re-do all the connections starting with the ground. I hooked this thing up like every other connection I've ever done at the battery but stranger things have happened.

The whole system is like a Relay. You have the main power wire from the battery going to the amp which is the constant power. The remote turn on is the signal wire the to tell the amp to wake up.

Your head unit will either have a power antennae wire or a remote turn on wire on the back of it. There's a 95% chance it's a blue wire.

Try that first before messing with any of your other connections. If you want to test and see if that's your problem, just run a jumper wire from the remote turn on on the amp to the battery and that should power up your whole system.

[koji]

You said the magic word: Relay.

Now I get it. I've worked with relays a lot. I'll fix this thing up tonight.

[sabing]

come on its a sunday. no new updates?

[koji]

I've been working on the Subaru for the last couple of days. I found some time to do a few things on the MR2 today, but nothing spectacular. The problem is that I've got two cars in parts at the moment so I want to finish the more done of the two (the Subaru) so that I can concentrate on the other. I'll post something up a bit later.

[koji]

So I've got two projects going at once. The Subaru, and the MR2. This is inherently folly, much like zhe Germans fighting a two front war against Russia and the Allies, so I'm trying to find ways for the two project to get along in the sand box. I think the best way to handle this is to combine like processes into single threads of effort. This worked out well yesterday because for both projects I'm doing some plastic repair, bonding, filling, sanding, etc. So - there are consequently parts for both cars in most of the following pictures.

After preparing some bits for the Subie I had plastic everywhere so I cleaned everything up and let it dry out in my dish rack:



I then glued in some plastic pieces that I cut to fit:



I got basically all these pieces ready for sanding:



And these bits need some more work today. I ran out of my plastic fusing epoxy so I'll need to get more today.



That's it for now. More to come!

[koji]

Had to take a break from turkey day socializing with the whole damn family (my wife and I hosted this year) so I finished a few things on my cars. I spent most of my break time on the WRX but I did get the amp/sub wired in, working, then secured and cleaned up with some wiring loom.



Most of the family is leaving tomorrow and it's a company holiday for me so I should be back at it shortly. More to come!

[mattdouken]

I'm sure plenty of people are going to get there panties in a twist, But I wouldnt wire the ground of the amp to the batty terminal..Just a OPINION..But I never have and I have done countless installs...

Trying to help.

[koji]

Where should I ground it then? Just to the chassis somewhere? Like I said, I've never done this before. Last thing I did that was sucking this much power were headlights and I grounded those to a grounding kit I installed.

[mmarookiejoe]

Leave it grounded to the battery; Since the amp is so close to the battery, there isn't a better place to ground it. Usually when I install an amp, it is somewhere towards the back of the vehicle and I would have to run (and hide) an extra ___ amount of ground wire. You don't HAVE TO ground to the battery, but it never hurts.

[koji]

Works for me. If the answer was going to be "you need to ground it to the engine block" there's no way I'm running that much heavy ass wire through the entire car. I'm also going to need all the space I can get in the firewall grommits to run signal wires for gauges.